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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23486764">only women should be funny</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind'>shuofthewind</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Cassian Also Swears A Lot, Cassian the Vulgarian Who Fights The Supreme Court About Everything, Jewish Jyn Erso, Jewish Organas, Jyn Swears A Lot, Mash-up, Stand-Up Comedy, They Both Crack Jokes and Smoke Weed and Pine Obliviously</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 08:48:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,654</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23486764</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Comedy is fueled by oppression, by the lack of power, by sadness and disappointment, by abandonment and humiliation. Now, who the hell does that describe more than women? Judging by those standards, only women should be funny.” – Midge Maisel</p><p>-----</p><p>Jyn Erso is a repressed Jewish girl from the Upper West Side fighting reality when her cousin gets engaged to an asshole. Cassian Andor is a professional vulgarian who gets arrested for saying the word <em>fuck</em>. They meet by accident in a cop car. </p><p>[A The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel AU that follows no rules. Not as cracky as it sounds.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>254</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>only women should be funny</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>There is a LOT OF SWEARING IN THIS. Like, a lot. Words used include fuck, cunt, cock, dick, etc. Other than that there's not a whole lot to budge the rating up. A racial slur is implied, but not openly used. Jyn jokes about killing babies at one point because she's making a point about enforced femininity and maternity. One joke about "illegally" crossing the US-Mexico border. Also, folks smoke weed. It's the 50s and they're in jazz clubs, of course they do. </p><p>This is potentially one of the weirdest AUs I've ever thought of, but I kind of fell in love with the idea of Cassian and Jyn as vulgarian comics in the 1950s fighting obscenity laws.</p><p>Thank you so much to LadyKnightTheBrave (@BatyaLewbel on twitter, go watch her Youtube movie vids!!!!!) for the sensitivity reading for Jewish!Jyn! I owe you bagels dearie.</p><p>Thank you also to runakvaed (@runakvaed on Tumblr) who spitballed all these ideas with me and is my Star Wars bestie and fellow stand-up fan. For you, dear!!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em> October 1958 </em>
</p><p>Her first gig is not a gig. Her first gig is an accident.</p><p>She’s still not quite sure how she made it to the Gaslight Café, but honestly, she doesn’t really care at this point. She’d been here two days ago with Leia watching her write the next great American novel. She bribes the doorman—guy—doorguy—with chocolates. She practically <em> lives </em> here. And she came here to—to tell the tables to fuck off, or something along those lines, her reasoning is fuzzy now, but some moron just walked off stage and she really, really wanted to see what it was like, the lights and the people and the <em> comedy </em> that Leia likes to come here to try and absorb, one human breathing in another to pour it all out onto paper. Kind of vampiric.</p><p>“What is,” says someone behind her, and Jyn turns.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“What’s vampiric?” says the girl at the front table. Her boyfriend is next to her, all Charlie Chaplin with his stupid mustache.</p><p>“The Catholic Church,” says Jyn automatically, cause it’s the first thing that pops into her head. Then, because it’s a good question: “Bad husbands. <em> Comedy </em>.”</p><p>Someone laughs.</p><p>“Did I mention,” she says, and suddenly it’s <em> very </em>bright on her. There are more lights in here than she thought. “That my cousin got engaged tonight?”</p><p>Someone whistles.</p><p>“Yeah,” says Jyn. She’s in the nice part of drunk where everything feels fluffy and warm, like she’s stumbling through cotton candy, fresh pulled out of the machine on the pier at Staten Island. It’d been a bad choice to drink all the vodka she and Leia kept in the freezer—bad, in that she will most certainly regret this tomorrow—but right now, it was seeming like an <em> incredibly good choice </em> . “Yeah. My cousin, the nicest Jewish girl up on the Upper West Side, brought home a—a dock worker. Her boyfriend, the <em> Protestant </em> . And he’s not even <em> blonde </em> . Why would you agree to marry a <em> Protestant </em> if he isn’t going to be <em> blonde </em>?”</p><p>In the front row, the girl with the kerchief on her hair whoops. Jyn, heartened by this, lifts the mic from its cradle.</p><p>“You should’ve <em> seen </em> my aunt when she brought him home today. There’s this thing that Jewish mamas do when they’re disappointed in you, and first they stop talking to you, and it’s terrible. And then they start talking to you <em> again </em> , and it’s <em> worse </em> —ah,” Jyn says, when someone at the front row starts giggling, “yes, <em> you </em> know what I’m talking about—it’s worse, because then they’re talking. Or yelling. Depends on the Jewish mama. My aunt is a yeller. She just started <em> screaming </em> in Yiddish. <em> Shanda, shanda. </em> For those of you who don’t know, it means <em> shame. Shame on the family, shame. </em>And my aunt just kept screaming, and my uncle was brooding in his study, and my cousin was yelling back, and this fucking dark-haired Protestant boy was standing in the corner looking like he was going to be boiled like a hot dog, and I just—I couldn’t take it. I left.”</p><p>She pauses, trying to track her thoughts together. Things keep spiraling. She would never <em>say </em>these things if she weren't drunk out of her mind. She's the quiet one, out of her and Leia. Leia is the one who pops off at any given opportunity. Jyn keeps her mouth shut until she has to scream into a pillow. But this is <em>freeing, </em>and honestly it's too fun to stop, so she doesn't. What the hell. You only live once, right.</p><p>The redhead behind the café counter is watching her with a funny look on her face. That or Jyn is too drunk to know what a funny look is anymore. She looks down at herself, and realizes she’s still in her dinner things. Nice shoes, she thinks. Shoes she’d rather burn, but that’s not up to her. She’s gotta look good. For the Organas.</p><p>“Yeah, friends, I left. Took the last vodka, said bye to the mezuzah at the door, and just left. Because today I learned that my best friend in the <em> world </em> —” she pauses, trying to track her thoughts together again. “My best friend, practically my sister, is in love and she’s gonna get married, and I left and drank all the vodka I could get my fucking hands on, because I am a <em> fucking </em> grownup. You know what we did, when I had my bat mitzvah? We made a promise that we wouldn’t get married until we met the <em> right guy </em> . We <em> did </em> that. We were <em> close. </em> And then she turns up out of nowhere with a fiancé I’ve never even <em> met </em>. And I’m—I think it made me lonely.”</p><p>“I’d still marry you!” says a man in the crowd.</p><p>“What?” Jyn blinks, slowly. “What? Come on, Cousin Levi, we <em> talked </em>about this shit!”</p><p>More giggles.</p><p>“This girl—” She’s getting faster now, the words tangling together, but she can’t bring herself to stop. “My cousin, a girl who went to <em>college</em>, mind you, who studied <em>mathematics</em>, because she’s smart<em>—she </em>decided to go out and get hitched to the stupidest <em>fucking </em>man to walk on two legs. If I could walk off this stage and kick every man in here in the balls, <em>just </em>to fantasize about kicking him, I would. But most of you aren’t as tall as he is, because he’s like the giant in <em>Jack and the Fucking Beanstalk</em>. Man, I wouldn’t even be able to <em>reach </em>his balls. Have you seen me? If he’s the giant from <em>Jack and the Beanstalk</em>, I’m the fuckin’ dwarf from <em>Snow White.</em>”</p><p>She’s pretty sure the guy in the front row who proposed to her just choked on his coffee.</p><p>“Anyway.” Jyn winds the cord around her fingers. The woman behind the counter is still watching her. Jyn feels very odd, floaty almost. She’d snuck a smoke of marijuana in college, and hadn’t been quite sure how she liked it, but—this is a better high than that, somehow. Drunk and on stage and listening to the fucking toilet flush behind her and getting people to laugh. Best fucking drug in the world.</p><p>“The only thing I can think,” she says, as the door to the café opens, “is that he’s got some kind of magic <em> fucking </em>wand under his stupid clothes and it’s given her some kind of fucking brain fever.”</p><p>Low giggles from the crowd.  </p><p>“Oh, who am I kidding,” she says, and in that moment she sees the cop come out of the shadows to stare at her on the stage. “Of course he does. It’s his penis.”</p><p>That’s when she gets arrested. When she’s bundled into the back of a cop car, sputtering, confused, suddenly <em> freezing </em>in the cold October air, she’s pushed smack into someone else’s shoulder, getting a strong blast of cigarette and booze and sweat and man. She’s not sure which is from the car and which is from the shoulder, but she reels back anyway—it’s too much for her, with the vodka, and the jumping, and the laughing and the lights—and peers at him through goggling eyes.</p><p>The man blinks back at her. She has a split second to think he looks familiar before his eyes dip to her dress.</p><p>“Wow,” he says after a moment. He has a strong accent she can’t identify right at this time, thank you very much. “Was there a party I missed?”</p><p>“Depends,” Jyn says. “Are you gonna ask me to show off my tits?”</p><p>“Language!” says the cop in the front seat.</p><p>“Ignore him, they’re very sad people,” says the man who smells like cigarettes and/or sweat. It's more cigarettes than sweat now. She's pretty sure the sweat is just layered into the canvas seating in the back of the cop car. “You got a license for that?”</p><p>“Got a license for your smart mouth?” she says. Then, it processes. “You need a license to show off your tits?”</p><p>“So I’m told.”</p><p>“But I got ‘em for free. Grew ‘em all by myself.”</p><p>There are funny crinkles at the corner of his eyes, like laugh lines. “I’m sure they’re very nice.”</p><p>“Both of you shut up,” says the cop. “You’ve already been arrested for obscenity, don’t make us ask for a second charge.”</p><p>“Aw, yeah,” says Jyn. “I keep forgetting you boys can’t count higher than two.”</p><p>“Don’t bait them, they’re trying their very hardest.” His dark eyes find hers again. “Miss—”</p><p>“Erso,” says Jyn. “Geraldine Erso. But I’m Jyn like <em> gin </em>with a J and not tonic.”</p><p>“Cassian Andor,” says Cassian Andor.</p><p>Jyn throws up in his lap at the first curve. She doesn’t really remember the rest.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>It is not, in fact, her first time getting arrested. It is, however, her first time getting arrested and having to get bailed out.</p><p>The lady from the Gaslight does it. Her name is Mara, she’s told. She has bright crimson hair all tucked up under a cap, she’s willowy but she hides it under heavy, frumpy clothes, and she tells Jyn in no uncertain terms that she is talented, that she is funny, and that she is fucking stupid to think she should keep her mouth to herself.</p><p>“Tell that to the boys I blew in college,” says Jyn, and Mara rolls her eyes. They’re very green. Mara is also very grouchy. Jyn is also very hungover.</p><p>“Save that shit for your act.”</p><p>“I don’t have an act.”</p><p>“Yet,” says Mara, almost ominously, and drags her off to a diner to get something greasy for the hangover.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>The thing about her act is that not all of it is real.</p><p>Her mama’s dead. Yes. Her papa was—in Europe, until Jyn was a few years old. She doesn’t talk about that. She <em> does </em> talk about him being a Columbia professor; she <em> does </em>talk about how math and stars make more sense to him than teenage girls, and how after her mama died (pneumonia) she got wrapped up like baby Moses and dumped in the lap of the Organas, Kings and Queens of the Upper West Side. (After trying to fend for herself for a few weeks, in their shitty apartment a few blocks down. She doesn’t make a joke out of that bit. She doesn’t like to talk about it.)</p><p>She talks about Breha, who is old New York money and has the bias to go with it. She talks about Bail, her soft-eyed uncle who tries to get her to talk to her father even when he <em> knows </em>it won’t work, and who plays the cello when he’s melancholic. She talks about Luke, who is barely ever there now, off at yeshiva to be a good little rabbi. She talks about Leia, who is real; Han, who is real, but a lapsed Catholic, not a Protestant; she talks about the arguments, and the fact that Leia is giving up her life as a single, independent woman to play house with a man who can’t seem to string a whole sentence together without causing another fight, but she doesn’t talk about herself.</p><p>Well, she does. She talks about her experience with sex (she’s a virgin but just barely, and she’s had enough dicks in her mouth to know she’s not really all that interested); she talks about her period (irregular, painful, debilitating, <em> pointless </em> ); she talks about her interests (knitting, yes, with long needles; skiing, no, cause it’s stupid); and she talks about her family (Leia, Luke, Breha, Bail, all four of them, more family than her father ever was); but she does not talk about <em> her. </em></p><p>Jyn is not very interesting. <em> Geraldine </em>is not very interesting. Jyn Erso is.</p><p>She’s not sure what that says about her.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>She bails Cassian Andor out of jail the next morning, and she tells herself it’s mostly to pay him dry cleaning money for his pants.</p><p>By the time she’s sobered up, she’s remembered Cassian Andor. There are enough articles in the world about Cassian Andor to know that most <em> everyone </em>in New York knows about Cassian Andor. The papers usually talk about him being an utter vulgarian. Considering Jyn puked in his lap last night, she’s not entirely sure what that makes her.</p><p>He stops at the top of the stairs, and looks at her. The police station feels very loud and echoing around her, especially with the remnants of her hangover.</p><p>“You’re not my sister,” he says, cigarette half in his mouth. Jyn arches one eyebrow.</p><p>“And you’re not Oedipus Rex.”</p><p>“Thought he married his mother,” Cassian Andor says, and starts his way back down the stairs again. Clearly he rolls with the punches, this guy, she thinks, though she’s not entirely sure what kind of punches she’s throwing his way. Now that she’s sober, she has the sense that he is much taller and much thinner than she thought he was. His hair, previously greased into curls, is now a mess against his forehead. “You bailed me out?”</p><p>“I did.”</p><p>“What for?”</p><p>“'cause I threw up in your lap.”</p><p>He looks down at his trousers, still stained, and says, “Eh. Not the worst date in the world.”</p><p>“Not a date.”</p><p>“Then you do it to all the guys you meet in the back of cop cars.”</p><p>“I’ve never been arrested before,” she says, and this time one of <em> his </em>eyebrows ticks up.</p><p>“Happy to be there for your first time.”</p><p>“Look,” she says, instead of blush, because he’s not flirting to flirt, he’s flirting to be funny, and that has no effect on her at all. “Is it really worth it?”</p><p>“Is what worth it?”</p><p>“Getting arrested,” she says. “Over funny jokes. Is it worth it?”</p><p>Cassian considers for a long time. He bums a light from her while he does it, cupping his hand close around the end of his cigarette while she lights the match and touches it to the tip, watching the paper and grass light with a low dim glow. He breathes out smoke, his eyes faraway.</p><p>“My mother wanted me to be a doctor,” he says, after a moment.</p><p>She’s pretty sure that’s her answer.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>
  <em> January 1959 </em>
</p><p>She watches more than she performs, at first.</p><p>Jyn has a job working in a bookshop in Greenwich Village, which is funny in and of itself because according to her aunt and uncle she shouldn’t be working at all.</p><p>She could have been a secretary, she supposes. But she likes the Village. Everyone here is weird. Makes for good bits, makes for funny peoplewatching, and it means she’s not always so worried about making her sets when she has them.</p><p>(Cassian bullies people into letting her do sets for them. They like her once they take the chance on her, she thinks—she’s called back even if Cassian’s <em> not </em> there, after a while—but even with Mara’s help, Cassian greases the wheels. She’s heard gossip about him and her, even if it’s not true, and she knows it’s not great for her image that she can’t quite stand on her own two feet <em> yet </em>, but she’s getting there, and besides, she likes his quiet support from the back row.)</p><p>More often than not, though, she sits in clubs and listens. Names she should know, names she doesn’t. She watches what works and what bombs, what clicks and what falls through. Mara watches her watching, and pulls her cap low over her eyes when anyone looks their way, as if she’s struggling to pretend she doesn’t really exist at all. Jyn takes notes, and does not ask as many questions as she could, and pretends that she and Mara aren’t friends because it seems to make Mara feel better. Leia and Han are still engaged. Han is struggling with the conversion process (which makes for a whole lot of jokes all on their own) and Breha is still not talking to her daughter, and Jyn writes jokes, sitting in bars and jazz clubs and the backs of police cars.</p><p>Out of all the comics she sees though, male or female, black or white, she likes Cassian Andor the most. It’s not that he’s kind to her—although he is, and she’s still not sure why. It’s that he’s a fucking livewire. Mara tells her about something that <em> all comics should know </em> (it’s something Mara says a lot, though Jyn’s not sure about how true all of it is)—that the energy between her and the audience is a living thing, and she has to learn to manipulate it, pull at the tension, tease, until she can get it to snap in <em> just </em>the right way. That half of comedy is tension, and that all of it is pressure, and it’s the choice between you or them, comedic timing and cutting the cord to your soul.</p><p>Cassian <em> blazes </em> . There’s no other way to say it. She is not sure she could <em> ever </em>be on fire the way Cassian Andor is on fire on stage. Off it, he’s burning, too—usually weed, cause he smokes a joint between performances and introductions, asks her back to hang with the band and pass the joint around and take a few hits to settle the nerves while they talk about arrests and Jim Crow and racism and voter suppression and everything else under the sun—but on, it’s like he’s a livewire. He crackles. The air bites.</p><p>“Words always confused me,” he says one night, in a dark jazz club in Harlem somewhere. Jyn’s never been to Harlem before, but she likes it. It’s all energy and motion, a beautiful breathless freedom she’s never had in her lifetime. “I learned English crossing the border with my mother when I was ten years old—yes, <em> ugh </em>, I supposedly broke the law coming here, I know, I’m a bad, bad man who does bad, bad things, says the U.S. government, but I’m a citizen now, so eat my—sandwich, gentlemen, what’d you think I was going to say?”</p><p>The room roars with laughter, like a living thing, like a lion pressed in close with all the energy coiled in its hind legs, ready to spring.”</p><p>“But the fucking thing—” Cassian unhooks the mic. “The fucking thing about fucking English is that there are so many fucking things you can get wrong with it, but out of all the words in this fucking language the most beautiful is the word <em> fucking </em>.”</p><p>She laughs because she can’t help it.</p><p>“<em> Fucking </em> ,” says Cassian, enunciating, slowly. “We’re all adults in here, you know, we’ve all said it— <em> fucking. </em> You can <em> spell </em> it. I can’t, my English spelling is the pits, but you can. <em> F-U-C-K-I-N-G. </em> ” He tips his head back, shouts it. “ <em> FUCKING CHRIST! </em>”</p><p>She hears the cops before she sees them.</p><p>“You can use it for anything, too,” he says. “It’s a noun when you call your brother <em> you fucker </em> but it’s a verb when you say <em> fucking, you’re fucking my wife </em> —and an adjective, too, <em> you fucking moron </em> , <em> you fucking cunt </em>—oops, I’m sorry, officer—”</p><p>“We’ve talked about this,” says the police officer, looking very tired. Cassian holds the mic, still, stays on stage.</p><p>“They arrest me every time, y’know. Every <em> fucking </em> time.” Cassian draws a breath, lets it out. “Arrest me but not the <em> fucking </em> Klan for murdering children in their beds. Arrest me but not the <em> fucking </em> rapists who walk free on Wall Street. Arrest me for <em> words </em> and not <em> them </em> for their actions. And what the fuck is the point of that? <em> Words </em> and <em> actions </em> . The Supreme <em> fucking </em> Court says that <em> free speech invites dispute </em> . I’m not here to fucking make peace. I’m here to start a <em> fucking war </em> and the motherfucking <em> Constitution </em> is my goddamn weapon!”</p><p>They arrest him. She bails him out. She does it with her heart in her mouth and she thinks on her sleeve, but Cassian, in the police station, is just tired. He has more bags under his eyes the longer she knows him, and she thinks that if he didn’t love comedy, at least a little bit, he would have given this up a long time ago.</p><p>She buys him coffee and a bagel, and sits with him until he eats it.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>
  <em> March 1959 </em>
</p><p>“I think there’s a bit in here somewhere I could do about farmworkers,” says Cassian, watching her eat an apple. “But I might get arrested again.”</p><p>Jyn looks up from her notebook, licks juice from the edge of her finger, and then writes, <em> apple juice and hookers. </em>“I mean, what else have you got to lose?”</p><p>“My car?”</p><p>“You don’t have one.”</p><p>“Nuts, I thought you’d forgotten.” He props his chin in one hand. They’re in a diner, for perhaps the millionth time since they’ve met, and she’s bought him coffee because he’s out of bail money, <em> again </em>. (She’d been arrested, this time. For flashing her tits on stage to a room full of drag queens. There had been a point. She’d been experimenting. She’s not embarrassed, though she thinks if her uncle and aunt ever learned, they’d have heart failure.)</p><p>“I forget nothing,” she says. Then she looks up. “Your mother wanted you to be a doctor.”</p><p>Cassian blinks, very slowly. He sips at his coffee, looking out the window, and Jyn goes back to writing.</p><p>“What about yours?” he says, after a moment.</p><p>“My mother died when I was eight,” she says. Her pen does not stop itching across the page. “I don’t have a fucking clue what she wanted.”</p><p>“Your dad?”</p><p>“Cassian.” She eyes him. “Are you trying to be nice to me?”</p><p>“I gotta know <em> some </em>things about the cute Upper West Side chick I keep bailing out of the slammer.”</p><p>“Funny guy.”</p><p>He eyes her, quietly. His eyes are dark and heavy on her skin, on her hands as she writes, on her mouth as she mumbles jokes to herself. She does not let herself feel it. She feels it anyway, warm as a touch on the back of her neck.</p><p>“People think we’re fucking,” she says, bald as brass, and Cassian doesn’t choke on his coffee the way she expects him to. He sips at it, instead.</p><p>“People think I fuck a lot of people.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, I’m not used to it. Sorry to disappoint.”</p><p>He nudges the tip of her shoe with his, under the table. “You mad about it?”</p><p>“No,” she says. “Just—this is why women don’t do things. Because everyone says it’s to fuck a man.”</p><p>He nods, slowly. She remembers in that moment that he has a sister, though Jyn has never met her, the same way he’s never met her family. Still, there’s a comfortable silence now, because she thinks he might get it, at least as well as he can, and he’s not offended that she’s brought it up, which she was scared of.</p><p>“My sister thinks we’re fucking,” says Jyn, and this time he does choke.</p><p>“Miss Jyn’s Cousin?”</p><p>“Her name is Leia, you moron.”</p><p>“She thinks we’re fucking?”</p><p>“She just knows you get me gigs. She asked if I slept with you. She’s pregnant and hormonal and her fiancé’s still AWOL. I think she’s bored out of her skull.”</p><p>(It’s a long story. Or not, because the short version is: Han couldn’t get through his conversion and split, and a week later Leia came up pregnant. Not an auspicious beginning.)</p><p>“Oh,” says Cassian. She thinks his ears might be red, but it’s hard to tell from under his hair. Then: “My roommate thinks we’re fucking.”</p><p>“You have a roommate?”</p><p>“Sometimes. Sometimes I have cellmates.”</p><p>“Laugh it up, har-de-har.” She punctures the page of her notebook with the tip of her pen, pushing too hard. “So the answer here is everyone thinks we’re fucking, but we’re not.”</p><p>“Apparently.”</p><p>“People are stupid.”</p><p>“Apparently.”</p><p>“And I’m late for lunch with my aunt,” says Jyn, and closes her book.</p><p>“Apparently,” says Cassian. He stands. “I’ll call you a cab.”</p><p>“You don’t have to.”</p><p>“We’re fucking, remember? It’s only polite.”</p><p>She almost doesn’t do it. Still, in the crowd of people, watching the taxi pull up, she watches him, the hair he hasn’t cut in a while, the bags under his eyes that never seem to fade. When he puts a hand to her back to urge her into the taxi, she puts her own on his arm.</p><p>“Why’re you being nice to me?” she says, very much Geraldine in that moment, not very <em> Jyn </em>at all. “I bailed you out, you bailed me out. It was ages ago. We’re even.”</p><p>Cassian looks at her hand, and then at her face, though it doesn’t seem to be a hint to get her hands fucking off him. He considers. He weighs his words, Cassian, when he’s not on stage. On stage he’s a firecracker, she thinks, a fucking lightning bolt, but out in the real world when he’s not trying to brush someone off, he thinks a lot about what he says.</p><p>“’cause you’re funny,” he says, after a long and tangled moment, and Jyn is the first one to pull back. She drops hard back into her taxi, and when he slams the door, she forgets what address she has to give the driver. All she can think is that Cassian Andor has very warm eyes.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>
  <em> June 1959 </em>
</p><p>“Something I want to bring up with the ladies in the room,” says Jyn, and eyes the drag queens in the corner. “<em> All </em>the ladies in this room. You know how we can’t fuck up?”</p><p>In the side of the room, Cassian is smoking. She can only make out the glow of his cigarette, but she can feel his eyes on her, heavy against her face.</p><p>“We can’t fuck up,” she says, and some of the women start laughing and clapping. “No, I’m serious. Like—we have to perfect. <em> All the time </em> . Like—we could be fucking our best friend’s husband and murdering our babies in the cradle but <em> God forbid </em>we have one hair out of place. It’d be a bigger bomb than my fucking bat mitzvah when the only people who turned up were my cousins and a sad donkey.”</p><p>It’s a new piece, one she hasn’t really tried before. She’s not sure what to make of it. If it bombs, she thinks, she’ll rewrite it. But her hands are shaking on the mic for the first time in a long while, and she’s really not sure why.</p><p>“We have to be pretty,” she says, and then pauses, beat, <em> one two three </em> — “Fuck that, we have to be fucking <em> gorgeous </em> , and I have to say that I’m good at it.” She puts a hand to her hip, gives a little shimmy, and the men in the audience all whistle and whoop and call back to her, a high, potent energy that ricochets like a rubber band between her and them and her again, tension that she pulls and pulls and pulls until it’s just about to snap. “We have to be nice and pretty with our dresses buttoned down and our tits perking up and our perfect hair and perfect eyes and perfect lips and do you have any <em> idea </em> how many magazines I had to read to get my eyelashes this curled? No? Then sit the <em> fuck </em>down, gentlemen, because it does not come for free.”</p><p>Mara’s watching too, and Jyn drops her a wink, full in flow, fully on fire with the show, but it’s Cassian she looks back to even if she can’t help it, looking and looking and knowing she can’t tell if he’s looking back. She doesn’t care, in that moment. She doesn’t care.</p><p>“And I always thought it was a scam,” she said. “We work so fucking hard to be perfect. We can’t make one little mistake. Not one. You know what my aunt does? Every night? She waits until her husband goes to sleep, and <em> then </em>she takes off her makeup. Not before. After. She waits until he’s asleep, and then she goes to the bathroom and wipes it all off, puts her hair in curling irons and goes back to bed, and then she wakes up early—every day, before him, every day—to put her face back on before he sees her. Because God fucking forbid we break the illusion that we aren’t people. I mean, think about it. When have you—when have any of you men in the audience seen your mothers or your wives or your sisters without their lipstick?”</p><p>A few hands. Not many.</p><p>“And this is what I’m talking about,” says Jyn, now on a roll, because the tension is in her hands and it’s an addiction all its own beyond cigarettes or weed or alcohol, the ability to hold and shape and snap this tension as she likes. “We can’t be ourselves, because to be ourselves is to be human. And we can’t be human, for we are angels. But don’t ask me to go out to Woolworth’s without my lipstick and my eyelashes on, gents, because if you did I don’t think any of us would survive it.”</p><p>“<em> Sit on my face, angel </em>,” cries a man from the back row, one of the drunks. Jyn mock-gasps into the microphone.</p><p> “I thought we just got through how women could be murdering babies, mister, what kind of pervert are you?”</p><p>“You’re not even that funny,” he says.</p><p>“Neither is your mama, but she pushed you out of her cunt once upon a time, so there must be a joke in there somewhere.”</p><p>The man shoots up out of his seat.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” says Jyn, looking at his face, at the crowd, which is jeering and laughing at <em> him </em> and not at her, but big men who are full of alcohol and heroin don’t always like to be laughed at. “I thought we were telling the truth now.”</p><p>“Dumb bitch,” he says. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Cassian stand.</p><p>“Who told you?” says Jyn, gasping to suit her point, and the crowd laughs again. To Cassian, she shakes her head, ever so slightly. He does not move away from his table. “Honestly, have you been talking to my auntie?”</p><p>The man grumbles, and walks off.</p><p>“See,” she says, as he leaves. “<em> That’s </em> what I’m talking about here. You think a woman could have managed to get away with that? Yes? Well, honey, you need to be smoking what <em> he </em>was twenty minutes ago.” It’s sloppy as shit, but she’s more shaken than she wants to say. Her hands are trembling like her eyelashes. “Honestly, if I ever get married I'm going to sit around topless with my curlers in and talk about my fucking cramps and if my husband can't deal with it then I'll chop him up and feed him to my neighbor, but since I'll be wearing perfect lipstick so you'd never know it was me.”</p><p>There. The crowd’s hers again. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Cassian sink slowly back into his chair. The cigarette has gone out.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>
  <em> June 1959 </em>
</p><p>Life on tour isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, she thinks, but at least it gets her away from her family.</p><p>They’ve found out. Mostly because Leia—pregnant, angry, lonely Leia—found her way to a club in the middle of one of Jyn’s shows, and outed her to everyone else. It was a fucking nightmare—she even had to stay at Mara’s for three days—so the news that she’s been hired to work gigs all over the country as a lead-in to <em> Bodhi fucking Rook’s </em>musical act is a big goddamn deal. On the other hand, she’s been working it for a straight month and if it is one thing she’s not cut out for, it’s the goddamn fucking jetlag.</p><p>It’s two in the morning in California, which means it’s five in the morning in New York, but somehow when the phone rings in her hotel she knows who it is before she picks up. Jyn leans back against the pillows, lifting the phone from the hook and tucking it between her jaw and shoulder. “The fuck are you doing up?”</p><p>“Is this the right number?” The line’s crackling, but Cassian comes through clear anyway, a smile in his voice even if it’s muffled around smoke. “Did I call a women’s prison again? I have to stop doing that.”</p><p>“You call women’s prisons?”</p><p>“I like stripes.”</p><p>“More like candy stripers,” says Jyn, and closes her book.</p><p>“Only if they’re you, baby doll.”</p><p>“Ah, fuck off.” Her face is <em> not </em>warm. “You didn’t answer my question, Cassian. The fuck are you doing up so late?”</p><p>“Few things here, few things there. Whole lot of nothing if I’m honest. I decided to get a plant for my windowsill and I think I killed it in three days. Had to choreograph a whole funeral. Miss Jyn’s Cousin gave the eulogy.”</p><p> “If that’s what you call nothing, I’d hate to hear what’s something.”</p><p>“Maybe I just wanted to talk to you,” says Cassian, and Jyn smiles, just a little. She keeps her mouth shut. “Things aren’t as nice in New York without you around.”</p><p>“Well, you could’ve come.”</p><p>“Me? Nah. Californians don’t like me. I talk too much about farmworkers’ unions. Gets ‘em all anxious and confused about themselves.” She can picture him, practically. There’s noise in the background, so he must be in a bar. Bumming someone’s phone, she thinks. He doesn’t really have an address outside of a city lockup, and with that comes no phone, no bed, no wardrobe, no wife, no kids, no family, no nothing. He has a sister, and he stays with her sometimes, but sometimes, too, Jyn wonders if she—her, Geraldine Erso—is practically the only person Cassian Andor has in the whole entire fucked-up world. And then she shakes herself out of those thoughts, because they’re too silly to stay in long. “What I want to know is why it only takes one or two questions from somebody with a Mexican accent to get all these white tomato farmers circling the wagons and loading up their shotguns.”</p><p>“I think it’s your accent. It’s sexy, it makes them nervous.”</p><p>“Tell that to my sister.”</p><p>“And have her gag me? No thanks.”</p><p>Cassian laughs, softly. “Real question here is what are <em> you </em>doing up at this hour? Thought you Upper West Side girls went to bed at eight with a glass of milk.”</p><p>“More like midnight with a glass of sherry,” says Jyn, and crosses her ankles at the end of her bed. Her toenail polish is cracking. It’s not like it matters, but Mara will murder her if she turns up for her next set in cracked polish. She’ll have to redo them before tomorrow night. “Nothing. Couldn’t sleep.”</p><p>“Funny,” says Cassian. “Me too.”</p><p>“Yeah? Must be going around.”</p><p>“Must be.”</p><p>She thinks for a minute he’ll hang up. The tone of sound changes on the other end of the line. Something locks up in her throat, something tight, like someone’s turned a key.</p><p>“Tell me about L.A.,” Cassian says, and she breathes. </p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p><em>October</em> <em>1959</em></p><p>She kills.</p><p>She does gigs in the U.S., in Europe. She figures out what works. She talks to Cassian maybe once a week, once a month for one horrible month. She talks to the rest of her family less. She comes back to New York early, and decides to drop in on a gig of Cassian’s that he’d told her about a week ago, as a surprise.</p><p>She gets in late—the taxicab runs into traffic—and she makes it in just in time to hear some anti-union bozo call Cassian something she will not repeat, will not <em> ever </em>say, but it makes her blood turn to magma.</p><p>“Hey,” she says, “cockface,” and when the guy turns around, she punches him hard in the face. She almost breaks her hand. She <em> definitely </em>breaks his nose. At the resounding, echoing cheer, she looks up at the stage, and she sees Cassian staring at her, open-mouthed, not quite a livewire but not quite a shell, either.</p><p><em> Hi </em>, she almost says, but then she’s arrested again, so what does it matter?</p><p>It’s cold in the cells this time of year. And it’s been a while since she’s been here, but Judy, the lady cop, lights her cigarette same as always and says “Welcome back, Erso,” in a way that might even be fond, if not for the crinkled nose. Her knuckles are split—she’d forgotten how much it fucking hurts to punch someone, even in the nose—and she’s twitchy, all hopped up on adrenaline and the shot of vodka she’d taken at the bar before making her way deeper in.</p><p>The bail comes in fast. She thinks it’ll be Mara, down at the bottom of the stairs, but—but no. This time, when she comes down the steps, it’s not. It’s Cassian. He’s disheveled—his hair is out of place—and he’s looking at her, and her hand smarts all over again with the force of that look, like it’s a goddamn fucking rocketship the Russian’s shot off into space.</p><p>“Hi,” she says, and stops on the middle of the stairs. She realizes in that moment that she’s still in her nice dress that she wore on the plane back from Vancouver, and it looks like she dressed up for his show. She <em> did not </em>. She thinks. “I thought you were Mara.”</p><p>“Funnily enough,” says Cassian, “I’m not.”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“You look cold,” he says after a moment. Jyn folds her arms close around herself.</p><p>“I mean, it’s fucking freezing up there.”</p><p>“<em> Erso </em>,” says Judy, still within earshot, and Jyn pops off a salute.</p><p>“Just going, Officer.”</p><p>“You left your coat at the bar,” says Cassian, and she realizes he’s carrying it, the pretty fawn coat that Breha had bought her for her birthday when she turned eighteen. She swallows. There’s something in his face that she can’t read, something that feels like that warm weight of him staring at her during her set. It’s lighting her nerves on end.</p><p>“I mean, I didn’t expect to come in and hear someone call you—”</p><p>She almost doesn’t see him step forward. She feels it, more than that. Feels the cup of his hand at the back of her neck, warm and a little rough, and the tickle of his mouth on hers, of the scruff on his cheeks and jaw. What had been a match turns into a fucking kerosene lamp. Her skin is on fire. Jyn hooks an arm around his neck, and pulls him close, and it’s the push and pull of something that’s like tension on set but is wholly, utterly theirs, that is close looks and jabs and sharing coffee and kicking each other under the table. She presses close, closer, and he makes a small sound into her mouth that has her biting at his lower lip, and she does not <em> care </em>that they are in a police station, that they will probably be arrested for obscenity for the seven millionth time in both their lives, when Cassian Andor is kissing her like she’s oxygen and he needs to breathe the world through her lungs. </p><p>Their noses brush when they pull back, and suddenly she can hear everything, the mutters of people around, the pounding of her heart in her ears. Cassian’s hand is tangled in the hair at the nape of her neck.</p><p>“Hey,” she says, after the world stops spinning a little. “I came to see your show.”</p><p>“Funny,” he says, and kisses the corner of her mouth, and then her cheek and then holds her closer in a hug. “That’s what I was going to say to you.”</p>
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